Purpose: The pre-treatment plan check by a physicist is a key component to ensuring patient safety and treatment plan quality. The report is also a critical part for the radiation therapy. The purpose of a computer assisted plan check and report is to ensure plan quality, accurate patient setup instruction, and correct documentation of patient and plan information.
Methods: To implement an assisted plan check a script was written using the ESAPI and C#. The plan check list and report follow TG275 and TG315 guidelines. The plan check includes prescription, structure, collision, constraints and parameters checks. The “print” button generates the report and saves it in patient’s folder. The report includes the coversheet with the ACR recommended checklist and patient setup instruction, the prescription table, plan summary, 2D-view, constrains table, parameters table and DVH. The setup instruction includes the import information about the plan such as DIBH, Bolus etc, shifts, SSD and table vertical position. This information is helpful to therapists to setup and treat the patient correctly.
Results: The script has been tested by physicists for 6-month, and was then implemented in clinic for 5-month. The script saved at least 30-minute for each plan check and printing. The script created report includes all the recommended items in the TG315 report. The most errors recorded by the script are the “reference-point-dose-limit” and “tolerance-table”. Since the implementation of this assisted plan check script, our near miss rate has dropped from the value prior to its implementation.
Conclusion: Automating some processes of the plan check and report reduces the errors, voids manual input mistakes, and improve plan check efficiency. This standardized treatment plan report can be used as a consistency check for planners, a pretreatment check by therapists, a quick review for the physicist’s initial, weekly and final checks, and billing verification.
Not Applicable / None Entered.
Not Applicable / None Entered.